The Socialite and the Bodyguard (8 page)

“I guess I wasn’t as smart as I thought. I kept thinking they liked me for myself.”

They should have. She was bright and she was tough. She was loyal to the point of blindness. She had plenty to offer a man. That they had used her when she’d been young and didn’t know better ticked him off and awoke his protective instincts. He exhaled, letting that go. Maybe she was just giving him the poor-little-rich-girl act. Could be that was how she always got what she wanted. He’d known another woman like that.

His expression must have said as much, because she launched into an explanation.

“I was raised in a sheltered environment. Industry leaders tend to stick together and socialize together. College was very different. Took me a while to figure it out and find a way to fit in.”

Okay. He could see that. “You were too trusting.”

“And now I don’t trust anyone.”

He had to laugh at that. “
I
don’t trust anyone,” he told her. “You don’t trust some imaginary boogeyman stranger. But the second you get to know someone and like them, you give your full trust without reservations.”

She’d defended her friends and staff against the slightest suspicion on his part and had reasserted over and over how much she trusted them.

“Name one person that you know closely and don’t trust,” he put out the challenge.

She struggled. “I don’t trust any man who asks me out.”

“That’s a good start.” He bit back a grin. “Babe in the woods.” He shook his head.

“I have you to protect me now, don’t I?” She rolled her eyes at him.

“And how long did it take to talk you into that? From the moment we met and were complete strangers until you trusted me with your life…twenty-four hours.”

“Maybe I should take that trust back and fire you,” she mumbled.

“You’re too smart to do that. You might cultivate the dumb-blonde image, but you’re far from it. You found a way to become director at the company. You raise millions for charity each year. You were smart enough to figure out that you were in danger and smart enough to keep up the clueless socialite act so whoever went after your parents and Lance wouldn’t know that you had a clue, wouldn’t come after you.” He’d figured that out at one point in the last twenty-four hours.

She pulled up her legs and rested her arms on her knees. Her short skirt slid up to reveal enough of her creamy thighs to make him swallow hard.

For a second he considered whether she was doing it on purpose, to distract him. But she seemed completely unaware of the hunger that had been building in him, her face guileless.

“But he did come after me,” she said.

“So you slipped up somewhere. Were you still pushing a police investigation?”

“Gave that up. Figured out that they were never going to believe me and if I kept insisting, I’d place myself in the killer’s crosshairs.”

“But you talked to someone about it.” Now that he knew her better, he didn’t think she was the kind who could give up something like this. She was too loyal for that. She would want to know what had happened to her older brother and her parents.

“I told my uncle so he could keep an eye out.” Her expression changed. She closed her eyes while she drew a long breath. Then looked at him with hesitation in her gaze. “Okay, I haven’t told you everything.”

He tamped back his annoyance. She trusted everyone around her except him, the one person who could keep her safe. How messed up was that? “I’m listening.”

“I might have something to do with—I might be the reason why my parents and Lance died.” She pressed her lips together, a pained expression on her face, misery sitting in her blue eyes. “When my father hired me, he gave me a low-level job in finance.” She paused as if still undecided about how much to say.

“We’re on the same team here,” he reminded her.

“I found a bunch of old travel-expense reports in a drawer and they weren’t stamped. So I wanted to make sure they’d been claimed by the tax coordinators on the other side of the finance department.”

“And?”

“They didn’t have time to bother with what they thought was a negligible amount. To keep me busy and off their backs, one gave me access to the system so I could check it out for myself.”

“You found that money was missing somewhere.”

Her azure eyes went wide. “How did you know that?”

“Money and murder go hand in hand. How much?”

“A little over a million dollars.”

“And nobody noticed?”

“It was taken in small amounts, disguised as travel expenses and on-the-spot employee bonuses. We give those out for good work throughout the year.”

“You took that information to your father.” A picture was beginning to gel in his brain.

She looked at her feet. “He was going to look into it. He and my mom were in a car accident two weeks later.”

“What did you do next?”

“I didn’t connect the dots at first. I was so devastated by the accident. Months passed before I thought of the missing money again. I told everything to Lance.”

“Then he died.”

She nodded. “I talked to the police, but the deaths were all ruled accidents. Half the time they thought I was loopy from grief, the other half they were accusing me of wanting more media attention.”

His jaw tightened. “But you told your uncle, too, and nothing happened to him.”

“He didn’t believe me. My father did—he was going to investigate the company records. So was Lance. My uncle is too trusting. He thought I just needed some rest.”

“How long ago did you talk to him?”

“Almost a year.”

“And you haven’t brought it up since?”

“Once I figured out that looking into the missing money might have led to the accidents, I didn’t dare.”

“He’s one of the VPs.”

“And he handles Greg’s trust fund.” That had come up at one point in his research. “Did you ever say anything about your suspicions to Greg?”

“No. There’s no point. It would just upset him.”

“But you think all this is somehow connected to the company.” He’d spent hours considering that and always came to the conclusion that Landon Enterprises and the hundreds of millions of dollars it represented was the most likely motive.

He couldn’t figure out, however, what someone might get out of killing the family. The stockholders owned the company, although both Greg and Kayla—and, he assumed, their uncle—owned considerable stock. There was no power struggle as far as he could tell, no bad blood between the CEO and any of the VPs.

“So the motive is to cover up a past crime, embezzlement.” It was all too possible.

“Or it could have nothing to do with the missing money. Maybe a business competitor figures that if Landon Enterprises gets decapitated and falls apart, they can snap up the market share,” Kayla said in a way that showed that she’d given this considerable thought.

“None of your competitors were in your apartment the night before last. And no Landon Enterprises employees were either, other than you and Greg.”

“But someone could have bribed one of my staff.”

“Hey—” He leaned toward her and tucked a stray lock of blond hair behind her ear, and nearly drowned in her ocean-blue eyes. “Whatever it takes, I’m going to get you out of this mess.”
And keep my hands off you.

They were sitting so damn close that their lips were separated by inches.

She was everything he couldn’t have. And he was a hairline away from not giving a damn. All he would have to do was dip his head. In another second, as she looked at him with those wide blue eyes, he might have.

But someone banged on the elevator shaft door below them, startling him back to sanity.

“You in there?” Mike’s voice filtered through. “Everything okay?”

Nash stood, rolling his shoulders, never happier for an interruption in his life. Mike had just saved him from making a colossal mistake. He owed the man.

“When are they going to get this thing moving?” The sooner the better. No room to escape the scent of her perfume in here. No matter how far he tried to pull away from her, she was always within reach. He needed to clear his head.

“They’re working on it. Something’s wrong with the computer.”

“Are all the elevators out?”

“Just this one.”

“I’m going to force the inner door open and hold it. You do the same with the outer door. If there’s enough room, Kayla can slip out.”

He didn’t trust the elevator all of a sudden. And maybe he was right, because out of the blue, the damn thing jostled.

He pried the tips of his fingers into the crack and strained his muscles pulling. He could hear Mike swearing outside. Progress was slow, inch by inch. Kayla stepped out of her heels, getting ready. Then Mike began to gain some headway at last, as well. When they both had a gap about a foot wide, Kayla slipped out, landing on the floor with a thump. The bottom of the elevator was at least three feet above floor level outside.

“Now you,” she said immediately, before even putting her shoes back on.

The elevator jerked and dropped a foot.

She yelped, rushing to give Mike a hand. “Hurry.”

Nash nearly lost his hold on the door as the damn thing shook. “If I let go of the door, it’ll close on me. I can’t.” She was safe. Maybe the elevator wouldn’t fall. He would have to chance it.

From the look of utter desperation that came into her eyes, she didn’t agree. “What are you talking about?” She was looking around wildly.

“You can let that close,” Nash was saying to Mike, getting ready to let his own end go.

“Wait,” she interrupted, running off already. “I’ll be right back.”

And true to her word, she was back in a minute, just when Nash’s back was beginning to ache from the effort of holding the inner door open. She shoved a fire extinguisher into the crack. Must have gotten it from the fire stairs.

Damn, but he could really come to like this woman. She was so much more than a pretty face. Seemed stupid now that he’d ever thought that of her.

“Good thinking.” He grinned at her and slipped through, going at an angle to get his shoulders past the narrow crack.

Then Mike let the doors close, flexing his arms afterwards. He was strong, had to give him that.

“Thanks.” Nash clapped him on the back. There was still some animosity between them, but now he knew that Mike could be counted on to put all that aside and come through in a pinch.

The man was sweating. “That’s my job, and—”

The elevator rattled, cutting him off. Then there was a loud hissing sound that went on for long seconds. Then a crash that seemed to shake the building.

Kayla went white.

Nash sprang into action. “You take her to the suite. Don’t open the door to anyone but me. Keep your gun handy,” he told Mike and began running as a sudden idea popped into his head.

If anyone wanted to mess with the elevator, they could either do that through the main computer at the security office—which would be pretty hard to get into—or at the backup panel and the manual override that was usually at the bottom of the shaft. In the basement.

He took the stairs two at a time. Swore. He was never going to make it down there at this rate.

He left the fire stairs on the next floor and went back to the elevator bank, pushed the button. According to Mike, none of the other elevators were affected. And this was his only chance.

Still, time seemed to crawl by the time he reached the lobby level. Going below that on the elevator required a special key. He got off and looked for the stairs, found them. The steel door to the basement would have normally been locked, but personnel were rushing in and out now. The elevator crash had definitely been heard and felt.

He sneaked by them, acting as though he belonged there. He’d had plenty of practice at this sort of thing. He could be damn near invisible if the occasion called for it.

He moved toward the sounds of people barking commands. Everyone was in uniform, everyone looked like part of a team assessing damage and trying to figure out if the elevator had been empty. Storage areas took up this side of the space, boxes piled against the bare cement walls. A jumble of pipes of various sizes ran along the ceiling.

He scanned the section of the huge basement that he could see. A lot of it was partitioned off. There was a door in the back that was swinging as if someone had just passed through there. He took off running that way. With all eyes on the elevator and the damage it caused, nobody paid him any attention.

“Stop,” Nash called out. “Stop right there.”

The man broke into a run. He was lithe and quick, around thirty if that.

Nash tore after him, ignoring the pain in his bad leg, and pushed through the door. Loading docks. Empty, save for the guy he was chasing. Probably everyone was at lunch or gawking at the elevator accident. The guy up ahead turned for a second. Nash was gaining on him.

He caught him in the far corner as he slipped through a gap between a parked truck and the wall. Nash couldn’t go after him; he was bigger and wouldn’t fit through the crack. But he had a firm hold of the man’s shirt.

He yanked the guy hard against the corner of the truck. Blond hair, green eyes, a narrow face with an unhealthy tan and crooked teeth. “Who do you work for?” He tried to pull the man back in, but the guy twisted right out of his loose uniform shirt and dashed forward, out of reach.

Then all Nash could hear was the screech of tires and a thump. By the time he made his way around the truck, the man was sprawled in a pool of his own blood on the ground. His lifeless eyes stared right at Nash.

“Damn.” He swore a blue streak as he moved closer, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.

“I didn’t see him. He jumped out of nowhere.” The white-faced driver of the delivery truck that had clipped the bastard was climbing down from his cab. His voice shook so hard, he almost sounded as if he was speaking with an accent.